EBOOK SELF-PUBLISHING EXPLAINED: TACTICS

Create a Retail (Paid) Siminar for your most passionate fans

Another way to create some buzz for your self-published eBook is through Siminars. You can give your audience a preview of your work, engage them with online forums and courses, and even talk to them personally. While this site does not publish full content for you, it does supplement any content you publish with other sites by giving your audience more. This site takes the eBook beyond the page and makes your work personal.

Differences in Retail and Open Siminars

Open Siminars are free content previews.You can publish the idea of your eBook or even sections and pages to get people talking about it. Once you’ve done something like that, you can link it to FREE social media accounts to drive more people to that content. These Siminars are limited in what interaction your audience can have with you and one another, though, and you do not make extra money from them. With the Retail Siminars you have another source of income for your work.

Retail Siminars are paid Siminars that give your audience more of your content. This does not mean that you pay for them, though. Your audience, once you have a fan-base, will pay to get more from you. Those that are interested in knowing more about you and your work pay a fee to the site and you receive 80 percent of the revenue and the site receives the remaining 20 percent. What this means for you is that you publish more content for your fans, they engage with you more, and you make more money.

Why you should create Retail Siminars

Every author who attains some reach with content has some portion of their readers who become RABID FANS. The problem so far has been that authors don’t really know how to monetize those fans beyond the page and some fan gear. Siminars.com can do that for you. Retail Siminars are ways to connect with your audience in new ways through your content. These Siminars are offered to your most passionate fans, which you charge for and they are more than willing to pay extra because they are your fans. You can also use Retail Siminars to augment the experience people have with your book. Create immersive engagements for your readers and connect them together to create passionate discussions around your topics.

These Siminars also reach out to those that don’t love to read, but that might be interested in your content because you’re able to narrow down points in your eBook and make them concise enough for some fans to read on a quick work break. Additionally they can discuss talking points with other fans, and if what those fans have to say is interesting to them they may be intrigued enough to actually buy your full eBook. This draws more people in and expands your audience beyond people that may not otherwise have bought an eBook from you.

Audiobooks and Retail Siminars

Believe it or not, audiobooks are still very popular and even if you’re an eBook writer, they can benefit you, too. In every market there are people who pay NOT to read, which is why audiobooks are so popular. Audiobooks have been on a steady increase over the past few years. According to the New York Times, audiobooks redefined the notion of reading starting in 2005. Since then, audiobooks have increased drastically, and the audiobook industry alone is worth more than $1 billion.

If you add a feature to your eBook for it to be read aloud, people can listen to your eBook instead of reading it. This does not mean that these people should be left out of the fun of conversing with other fans, though. So often they are and this makes people shy away from fan-gear and fan forums. With your Retail Siminar, though, you can test people on their knowledge of the content they read or heard, and you can engage people in ways you wouldn’t have been able to before if they bought the audiobook and not the eBook.

Making Retail Siminars work for you

The best way to start a Siminars account is to do an Open Siminars forum first. Even your fans will want to read this, so give them something for free before they start paying more for your work. After you have thoroughly promoted your work on the free site, start offering your Retail site to only a select few of your fans that comment often or buy your work. After you have them hooked and feeling like VIP to your content, you can start opening the Retail Siminars up to more people.

Once you have a good group of fans (20 or more) signed up on the Retail portion of Siminars, start offering them more and more content. First give them a course to take to show just how much they know about your book. You can also offer a course to take a quiz about how much they know about you. To really entice people, offer a free download of your next eBook if they participate and have their name drawn. You can also offer a free eBook for anyone who scores 80 percent or higher on your courses. Create discussion forums, too, to keep them talking about you and your work.

Expanding beyond the Siminars

Siminars is not the end all, be all to engaging your audience. It is a fantastic tool that can be used to engage your audience and bring them content beyond the page, but you shouldn’t stop there. Anytime you put anything on Siminars you should link it to social media accounts. Anytime you have the chance to offer an interactive tool, though, whether it is through Siminars or elsewhere, you should take it. For instance, if your eBook can be turned to an audiobook you should do it. This will not only intrigue your current audience, but it will entice more people in because not everyone enjoys reading a book.

Siminars is a fantastic resource for being able to engage a new audience and to keep your fans coming back for new content for you. Too often fans feel left out of promotions and new deals with authors’ work, so they don’t participate. But your fans are the ones that keep returning to your work and they are the ones that draw new people in. You can show your appreciation and make more money from them by creating Retail Siminars for them to participate in.